VERNAL — Uintah County prosecutors have filed felony and misdemeanor charges against 21 people from 10 states who were arrested during a summer protest at the site of a controversial tar sands mine.

Prosecutors charged Jesse Jordan Fruhwirth, Laura M. Gottesdiener, Daniel Joseph Gruppo, Camila Allison Ibanez, Damien Thomas Luzzo and Victor Enrique Puertas on Friday with rioting, a third-degree felony, and interfering with an arresting officer, a class A misdemeanor. Lionel Patrick Trepanier was charged with failure to stop at the command of law enforcement, a third-degree felony, and criminal trespass, class A misdemeanor.

Prosecutors also charged Elizabeth Arce, Iliana Correa-Hernandez, Anna Dorothy Leopold, Melody B. Leppard, Valerie Montana Love, Maribel Alejandra Mercado, Samuel Ralph Neubauer, Belmont Towbin Pinger, Eric Michael Recchia, Ashlyn D. Ruga, Lorenzo Daniel Serna, Tabitha Skervin and Cynthia Francis Spoon with criminal trespass, a class A misdemeanor.

Correa-Hernandez, Leopold, Love, Mercado, Pinger and Ruga were also charged with interfering with an arresting officer, a class A misdemeanor, and Melinda Hatch was charged with rioting, a class A misdemeanor.

The charges stem from a July 21 protest at the U.S. Oil Sands mine site, which sits on land leased to the Canadian energy firm by the state School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration.

During the protest, 12 environmental activists climbed an 8-foot-tall, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and entered the mine site, according to court records. Five of the activists chained themselves to heavy equipment inside the fenced area, deputies said.

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21 protesters arrested at Utah tar sands mine

Twenty-one people from 10 states were arrested Monday during a protest that "became physical" at a controversial tar sands mine in northeastern Utah, according to the Uintah County Sheriff's Office.

About 30 protesters outside the fenced area were told to leave the mine site or face arrest, according to court records. Only one of the 30 failed to follow that order and was arrested.

Fruhwirth, Gottesdiener, Gruppo, Ibanez, Luzzo and Puertas sat down on Seep Ridge Road to block the way when a van filled with the arrestees tried to leave the site, the charges state. They physically resisted attempts by deputies to move them, and one deputy suffered a wrist injury while arresting Puertas, according to court records.

In July, Utah Tar Sands Resistance spokeswoman Jessica Lee said deputies treated the protesters so roughly during the arrests that it amounted to police brutality.

"This is a clear example of the Uintah County sheriff escalating things," Lee said at the time, noting that protesters were "grabbed in an aggressive manner" and some were "thrown to the ground."

One protester was taken to Ashley Regional Medical Center in Vernal before being booked into jail. The man was treated for a severely sprained ankle that he suffered when he tripped over sagebrush while running from a deputy, according to the sheriff's office.

Officials with U.S. Oil Sands have said that 200 exploratory wells at the mine site show that 190 million barrels of oil can be successfully recovered. The company holds leases to nearly 6,000 acres of school trust lands in northeastern Utah.

Crews are currently doing site preparation work at the mine. U.S. Oil Sands expects to begin mining operations by the end of 2015.

Those charged in connection with July's protest listed addresses in Utah, Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oregon and Wisconsin when they were booked into the Uintah County Jail. They are all scheduled to make their first court appearances Thursday.

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